2006/12/31 by Suman Bhattacharya, Arthur Kosowsky · 51 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #CMB cold spot #Cluster (spacecraft) #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark energy #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy cluster #Matter power spectrum #Normalization (sociology) #Peculiar velocity #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Spectral density #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/517523
published in The Astrophysical Journal 659(2), L83-L86 (IOP Publishing) · 4 pages, replaced to match accepted version in ApJ Letter. Table 4 shows parameter constraints for normal velocity error of 300 km/s. Reference added
openalex publication_date 2007/03/16 · arxiv created 2007/04/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Future microwave sky surveys will have the sensitivity to detect the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich signal from moving galaxy clusters, thus providing a direct measurement of their line-of-sight peculiar velocity. We show that cluster peculiar velocity statistics applied to foreseeable surveys will put significant constraints on fundamental cosmological parameters. We consider three statistical quantities that can be constructed from a cluster peculiar velocity catalog: the probability density function, the mean pairwise streaming velocity, and the pairwise velocity dispersion. These quantities are applied to an envisioned data set that measures line-of-sight cluster velocities with normal errors of 100 km s -1 for all clusters with masses larger than 10 14 M ☉ over a sky area of up to 5000 deg 2 . A simple Fisher matrix analysis of this survey shows that the normalization of the matter power spectrum and the dark energy equation of state can be constrained to better than 10%, and that the Hubble constant and the primordial power spectrum index can be constrained to a few percent, independent of any other cosmological observations. We also find that the current constraint on the power spectrum normalization can be improved by more than a factor of 2 using data from a 400 deg 2 survey and WMAP third-year priors. We also show how the constraints on cosmological parameters change if cluster velocities are measured with normal errors of 300 km s -1 .